Early Days
The North Staffordshire Railway Society was formed in the 1970s and bought the old goods yard at Cheddleton Station. Workshops were created there and the first locomotives arrived in 1977, although British Rail were still using the adjacent railway to move industrial sand from the quarry at Oakamoor.
British Rail ceased using the line in 1988 and the society began to arrange for the purchase of the stretch from Oakamoor to Leekbrook Junction.
The first trains ran over the preserved line between Cheddleton and Leekbrook Junction, a distance of roughly 1 mile (1.6 km), on 24 August 1996.
Read more about this topic: Churnet Valley Railway
Famous quotes related to early days:
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread’; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)